Maggie Rants [and Raves]

Born to be Wild

by Maggie Franklin | May 26, 2015 | Bookmark +

I am about to go on vacation. A real, honest vacation. One that will be spent blissfully without cell signal or Internet most of the time.

In fact, I won’t even be able to have a conversation with another human being for approximately 10 hours of each day for an entire week.

I. Am. So. Excited.

I only have room for so many voices in my head. Once you account for the muses that inspire me and the phantoms that I spend a good time ignoring that leaves very few spaces for real people to add their voice to the din.

My comfort level for voices is somewhere between making a decent living and worrying about getting my bills paid: About four clients a day. Maybe five if I’m able to stick to my four-day work week schedule.

Unfortunately, I have been working a five-day week, averaging eight or more clients per day.

Last year, I went on an epic motorcycle ride to Yellowstone National Park all by my lonesome. Because it was supposed to be a backpacking trip with the BFF and the BF didn’t think that sounded like a good way to spend a week, so he didn’t take the time off.

When I got home, I told the BF that he’d better be ready because I would be doing the Southwestern states this year.

We are now T minus seven days. Dog/house-sitters have been arranged. Clients have been rescheduled. All we have left to do is...

Not break up.

Because the BF and I are different.

Don’t worry, we’ll be OK. Once he gets his wheels rolling he’ll settle down. Or I’ll tranq him. But the point is — eight days of blissful white noise in my helmet, drowning out the whining and the griping and the drama. Blowing it away in my wake like a thousand dandelion seeds being set free in the wind.

No phone. No Internet. Not even helmet-to-helmet communication between me and the BF — no boats, no lights, no motorcars. Just like Gilligan’s Island.

OK. There will be lights and motorcars — there’s even a boat, because we’re taking the ferry across Lake Powell.

All I have to do is get through one more week of whining and griping and drama, along with a suspiciously high number of sniffles, coughs, and sneezes for this time of year, and the BF fretting about whether we’ve crossed all our I’s and dotted all our T’s.

But you don’t even want to see what my schedule looks like my first week back at work. Looking at it makes me whimper in terror.

Maybe I just won’t come back.

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